5punk

I had Fista 64 and after some issues put XP back. I then got a new Motherboard and want to put Fista back on. I hear there is a way to delete some file that holds hardware change info or something so I can reinstall Fista without it knowing I changed,

Tried to google this but not getting anything useful.

Not that I know of. In what form do you have a Fista OEM? As a reinstall CD/DVD which installs Windows or an image?

If it allows you, install it and when the activation pops up, just go through it. If it's a legit key then ringing up Microsoft takes 10 minutes of your time and just works

Course, you can just install Fista and use it for 120 days without a legit key

Found this in a forum for someone asking the same question and sounds like the route you are trying to take:

shouldn't need to repair anything, have you already done the hardware swap? if so is the computer not booting? and at what point does it hang?

if you haven't done the swap yet it should go over pretty simple.

my suggestion is to uninstall all drivers for the mobo and devices on the mobo, uninstall sound and video drivers as well, i recommend booting into safe mode as well before the swap and using driver cleaner to clean off an driver remnants.

if you have an ide devices i'd switch your ide driver in device manager to the generic windows driver, though this was more important in xp before a mobo swap, Fista might also benefit. it may actually already be using the generic driver.

i've done plenty of mobo swaps without reformatting, granted that was in xp, but it's super simple, i've successfully swapped an nf4 amd mobo for a p45 based intel mobo in Fista, nary an issue to be found.

all you're really doing is getting rid of hardware specific drivers for the hardware you're removing, i only suggest video and sound driver removal as an extra precaution.

afterward you may want to go into device manager and enable hidden devices to remove any left over devices for the old hardware, though this isn't really a big deal in my experience, i often don't bother anymore.

OK that was a huge anticlimax, I did a clean install and it activated fine

Sorry!

Better to ask and be sure than fuck it up.

Still, that deserves a Pfffft.

Glad it worked out!